This plane tree once did a second job as a utility pole. Navarra's register records it as a large plane carrying old supports for electrical cables, the brackets still fixed to the trunk long after whatever they held came down. It is the kind of detail a register almost never gives, and it makes this the one tree on this stretch of the Arga you can identify without a map. The measurements are respectable on their own. The register puts the trunk between 120 and 130 centimetres across, so somewhere between roughly 3.8 and 4.1 metres round, which is a serious plane by any standard and an unusually big one to find standing on a riverbank rather than on a boulevard. Pamplona's own survey of its old trees writes warmly about the planes of the Rochapea bridge, shade for the women who washed clothes in the Arga, and about stands of roughly century-old planes along these banks. It never names this tree, so treat that as the mood of the place rather than as evidence about this trunk. And that is the honest gap: the register is the only source that describes this specific tree, its survey dates from 2013, and nobody has recorded an age. The cable brackets, at least, are something anyone standing there can check. If you know more, tell us.
From people who stood here
No notes yet
Did you visit the tree? Leave a note for the next visitor.
Getting there
Iruñerriko ibai-pasealekua (river walk), Magdalena, Txantrea, 31004 Pamplona
You can recognise it by the old electrical cable brackets still fixed to the trunk, and by being a plane among poplars, with patchy flaking bark and broad leaves. It stands on the Magdalena river walk in Txantrea.
Free, on the public riverside footpath (Iruñerriko ibai-pasealekua / Parque Fluvial de la Comarca de Pamplona), open at all times. Same public footway confirmed via OpenStreetMap (way 816826057, highway=footway) as the black poplar on the same stretch, about 80 metres away.
In the Magdalena area of the Txantrea district, Pamplona; reachable on foot along the riverside path, or by Pamplona urban bus (TCC network) to Txantrea/Rotxapea, then a short walk to the riverbank.
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: Arboles Singulares del Parque Fluvial de la Comarca de Pamplona (Gobierno de Navarra, SITNA), no. 35300014 tree 3
- datosabiertos.navarra.es